“Yes.”
“No. There has been no unauthorized access.”
I wrinkled my nose. I must have left it on. I grabbed my towel and a bottle of Miss Lilly bubble bath from the bag Mariya had given me and headed to the bathroom.
I poured the liquid soap under the gushing hot tap and delicious smelling steam filled the tiny cubicle. It reminded me of happy times at Blackhurst. I unwrapped the dressing from my knee and sank into the warm water. Careful to keep the wound dry, I wiped the mud and blood from the rest of my leg, then examined the cut. The glue seemed to be coming out. I touched it lightly and it just fell off. My heart skipped a beat. Where there had been a deep cut less than an hour ago, the skin was now clean and whole.
It was like my body had spat out the glue and knitted itself back together.
Deep down, I knew I should probably tell someone. But surely they were already aware of…whatever it was? This had to have something to do with my being frozen, didn’t it? So why not tell me to expect it so it didn’t freak me out? Urgh. I wasn’t sure what to do. What if they didn’t know? They’d make me go back to the clinic, wouldn’t they? To investigate it? I couldn’t bear to be poked or prodded any more. I didn’t want to be a medical miracle. I just wanted to be Laura Henley. A normal, teenage girl. At Whitman’s, with my new friends, it felt like I was getting there, and I didn’t want to give that up.
I got out of the bath and put the bandage back on. It could wait. I’d mention it to Miss Lilly the next time I spoke to her.
Maybe.
Back in my room, I rummaged through my wardrobe for something cosy to put on. I pulled out the floppy-eared rabbit thing. It was ridiculous but so soft. I put it on and sat down to reply to Stacey.
I still wasn’t sure what to say but I knew I wanted to be armed with all the facts. I steeled myself and asked Notitia-John to find the interview Stacey had given to the press. The one that had sent Mum and Ima running to France. It didn’t take long.
FROZEN OUT!
Stacey Flowers tells our reporter how Laura Henley’s lesbian mothers left her out in the cold when her best friend was put into cryostasis.
My stomach clenched like I’d been punched. Mum and Ima would never have done that. The report had a picture of me and Stacey when we were really young, before Alfie was born. We were sitting on a low wall in shorts and Aertex T-shirts, my scooter on its side at our feet. I was grinning a gap-toothed smile and she was sticking her tongue out.
Stacey must have given that to the paper. Who else could – would – have done that? Not Mum and Ima, that’s for sure. And if she’d given them that photo, she was probably behind the Wikipedia picture too. She’d have only had to ask Mum and Ima and they’d have given her copies. They loved her nearly as much as I did. I couldn’t bear to read any more.
I pressed my lips together. What should I say to Stacey? How could I explain how hurt I felt? How disappointed?
“Notitia,” I said, “can you send this article as a link to Stacey Flowers?”
“Yes, I can do that.”
I watched Notitia-John seem to suck up the report and throw it back into a message to Stacey.
A little pencil hovered over the message bubble and then her reply came straight back, like she’d been waiting all day.
That’s not what it looks like. I was tricked, Lu.
Another message pinged in.
You have to believe me.
I wanted to believe her, but she must have given them the picture – there was no way that was a trick?
Laura? Please answer me.
I wrote back:
That interview pushed Mum and Ima over the edge. Did you know that’s why they were in France? The coroner said they were distracted by recent events and that was why they crashed. I’ve got no one now.
You’ve got me, and Alfie – they’re surely going to revive him too now?
Alfie – I had to take a steadying breath before I could type the rest – didn’t survive.
The little pencil hovered and hovered. A message pinged in.
Are you sure?
Was I sure? She must know what had happened to the other cryopods in the fire. The fire caused by her and her friends.
I sat back. I had no idea what to say next. There was so much space between us – in time and place and in all the things that had happened. It was a vast and painful desert, which I had no idea how to cross. We’d always found it so easy to talk to each other before. I’d told her everything, everything.
Beads of rain dribbled down the window, pooling on the little lead ridges, then spilling over. Like tears.
Yes, I’m sure. They couldn’t revive him. The kid who always wanted you to stay longer, who thought you had eyes like Batman and always saved cake for you – he died because you and your pals set fire to the clinic that was doing its very best to give him another chance at life.
My throat ached with tears.
I missed Alfie so much. I thought about all the things we’d never do together again. No playing football, no reading tractor books, no making sandcastles or eating ice cream.
The rain poured down the window, reflecting how I felt. Hedge Boy would be soaked to the skin.
No watching Postman Pat, no making butterfly cakes, no watching him open presents on Christmas morning.
My slate pinged with a message – not from Stacey, from Miss Lilly.
Hi Laura, hope you’re settling in okay! I see you’ve updated your Instagram account – well done, 21st-century girl! You can post this if you like – she’s a terror!
There was a video attached. I flicked it open. Batfink was sitting on the robotic vacuum as it moved around the kitchen floor. She was swatting at imaginary mice, then she fell off and scrabbled to her feet, pretending nothing had happened.
It made me smile. I messaged back:
The little minx got over her fear then? I miss her furry face. x
Miss Lilly replied: And we miss you. x
I opened Instagram to see if I could work out how to post the video. I was astonished to see the picture of my watch had dozens of comments and hundreds of likes. There was a message from Marsha:
Hey, Ice Girl. Come follow me.
I pressed on her name so I could see her timeline. There were loads of pictures of her pouting at the screen. In some she’d done something to the picture so she looked like a puppy. I smiled. I scrolled back through her posts and was surprised to see they didn’t go back that far – pretty much only to when she’d come to Whitman’s. Maybe they didn’t have Instagram in Russia? Unsure of the etiquette but thinking you couldn’t go wrong by being nice, I’d started liking all her pictures when a message blinked on my slate from Stacey.
Did you check?
What did she mean? Check what?
Did you check that she wasn’t lying? That Alfie is really dead?
I stared at it. What a horrible, horrible thing to say. Cold fury washed through me. How could she be so thoughtless? So cruel?
Another message:
This is making me nervous. Do you remember Spiditik?
Spiditik had been the code we used for secret notes. We just changed all the vowels to “i”. It was a total joke; anyone could crack it.
Why?
We need a safer way to talk. Expect Spiditik.
I flicked the message away, my heart a pebble in my chest. To be so heartless about Alfie… I didn’t know who that person was, but it wasn’t Stacey. Not my Stacey. I wanted nothing to do with her.
At breakfast next morning, I was determined to eat porridge and start building myself up a bit. I persuaded Marsha to come to the canteen with me.
I stirred a big blob of jam into my bowl, making a red spiral. It tasted pretty good.
Marsha picked at hers, muttering, “I hate this muck.”
Keisha sat down with a clatter of her tray. “Hey.”
Marsha nearly exploded with rage. “Why do you have to make so much noise?” She got up and stormed out.
/> “What was that about?” I asked.
Keisha shrugged. “Marsha being Marsha.”
I shook my head and raced out after her. “Wait, what’s up? What on earth’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, there’s clearly something. You just bit your friend’s head off.”
“Keisha is not my friend. People like me don’t have friends.” She turned sharply away.
“What do you mean?” I caught hold of her arm.
“I mean…” She did a tiny stamp with her foot – for real, she actually did that. “My father wants me to leave. There is no point in me having friends, so if I was you, I wouldn’t even bother talking to me.”
“Leave?”
She walked swiftly away. I hurried to follow, thinking she’d head straight to our form room. She didn’t. She ducked under the yellow tape and out of the side door and started walking in the direction of the bell tower. The dangerous ruin of a bell tower that we were expressly forbidden from going anywhere near.
I hovered beside the door. “Oh hell,” I muttered. “Marsha, you idiot.”
I took a deep breath, looked behind me to check I wasn’t going to get into immediate trouble, and nudged the door open.
“Marsha?”
She was crouched by a wall. It looked like she was putting something into her pocket but before I had a chance to ask her what she was doing she got to her feet. “I just need some space, okay?”
“But it’s dangerous out here.”
She rolled her eyes at me.
I tried again. “Is there anything we can do? About your dad?”
She shrugged. “He snaps his fingers and I have to jump. I thought he might forget I was here. I hoped he would. Did you know he tricked me into coming here?”
I shook my head in disbelief.
“He told me I wasn’t doing well enough at my Russian school and if I wanted to stay there, I had to prove to him that I was on a level with British girls my age. He made me sit the entrance exam and then, when I passed it, he sent me here.”
“But why? If it proved you were doing so well?”
She shrugged again. “Maybe it was him – what do you say in English? – keeping up with the Smithses.”
“Joneses.”
“Whatever. Or maybe he didn’t like my boyfriend back home.” A sly smile crept up one corner of her mouth. “Yuri is not what you call a nice boy.”
“But then it makes even less sense for you to go back.”
“Please try not to be such an idiot. My father doesn’t know about Yuri.”
I frowned. Something about all of that didn’t make sense, but I was interrupted from puzzling it out by a crash as a piece of tower tumbled into the courtyard.
“Okay. Maybe you’re right,” Marsha said. “Maybe it is dangerous.”
She slipped her arm through mine and said, “Come on. Let’s go to form and begin the day’s torture. Might as well get used to daily disappointment, that’s what life is all about.”
Something about the casual way she said that made me shiver. I could imagine the young woman she’d grow into if the people who were supposed to love her kept shipping her from place to place. Everyone needed roots, didn’t they? Somewhere to call home.
I was so lucky to have a second chance at that. I gripped Marsha’s arm just a little bit tighter and said a prayer of gratitude that Miss Lilly was looking after me.
It was time to go. I had to try and find somewhere half decent we could stay. I was just waiting for dusk, for gloom and quiet so we could slip away unnoticed, when the girl came back. I hid at the back of the bush, holding on to Scrag as she hung something on a branch. Scrag wriggled free but I caught him and pulled him back. Stupid dog. He had trust issues. He trusted everyone.
When I was sure she’d gone, I crept out. She’d left a bag. I almost didn’t open it. It could have had anything in it – someone once threw a bag of fish heads at Bert.
I sniffed it. It didn’t smell like fish. It didn’t smell like steak and pizza either, but I took a risk. Inside was a doughnut, glistening in sugar. I was sick with hunger, actually drooling. I tore a bit off and gave it to Scrag and shoved the rest in my mouth in one go. It was so sweet, it filled me with a buzzing energy. I was sorry I’d been rude to the girl, but it was too late to fix that. I wiped my nose on the back of my stump. Time to go.
I headed back to the hole I’d made in the fence when I first broke in. It was hard to find in the dusk and I was just starting to worry that they’d fixed it when I spotted the gap. It looked smaller than I remembered but if I’d come in, I could get out. I watched for a bit, to make sure no one was lurking outside, then I crawled through, the wires snagging on my back. I called to Scrag to follow.
He wagged his stubby tail and came after me.
There was no point in going back to my burned-down shed. No point in going to the station. I decided to walk north and see where we ended up.
It took about two minutes to get to a proper road and almost straight away I had a being-followed ache between my shoulder blades. I looked behind me. There was no one there.
The feeling didn’t go away but my shoulder blades had got it wrong. There was no one following me. They were in front of me. Waiting.
A shadow stepped out from behind a tree and shoved a bag over my head before I could do anything to stop them. It stank of something rotten. They clamped my arms to my sides. I kicked out, twisted and turned, fighting to get free. Scrag growled and barked.
My mouth filled with bits of dirt and God knows what else. I spat them out, shouting, “Get off, leave me alone!”
“Be a good boy now, Shem, and nobody gets hurt.”
Someone kicked me in the back of the knee and I buckled to the floor.
Scrag snarled and I could hear from the change in his growl that he had his teeth in something.
“Get off me, you dirty…” the man said. I was tugged sideways as his boot lashed out. Scrag yelped and then…nothing.
“Scrag!” I struggled and fought and screwed my body every which way to get free of whatever was pinning my arms down, but then something was pressed tight against the cloth bag, right over my mouth and nose and I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t…
We were halfway through a biology lesson when a Year Seven kid came in with a message for Marsha. My friend’s face was white as she left the class. She didn’t come back that lesson and she wasn’t at lunch or afternoon lessons either. Just before prep I went to find her.
She was curled up on her bed, face to the wall.
“Go away.”
“It’s me.”
“I don’t care.”
Keisha appeared from behind me. “Marsha, what’s happened?”
“Did your dad call?” I asked.
“What do you care?”
“Don’t take it out on us,” Keisha said, hurt. “We haven’t done anything.”
Marsha rolled over. She looked awful. Her eyes were puffy and her face looked flushed and sweaty. She threw something small and hard at us and yelled, “I said, go away!”
Keisha caught the missile surprisingly neatly and held it out to me. It was a Cadbury Creme Egg. I hadn’t seen one of those for, literally, decades. My mouth watered. Keisha dropped it in my palm and said, “You talk to her. I’m sick of her lies.”
Marsha went pale. “I don’t lie.”
“Really? Then who’s Yuri?”
Marsha looked away. “My boyfriend.”
“You don’t have a boyfriend. You don’t have TouchTime. You do have a Creme Egg problem that would feed half of Russia.”
Marsha sat up, fury bubbling off her. “How dare you? How DARE YOU?”
“That’s better,” Keisha said. “Far more Marsha.”
Keisha opened a drawer that was completely full – I mean, COMPLETELY full – of Creme Eggs.
“Hang on,” I said, “that doesn’t look like a Creme Egg problem. That looks like Creme Egg heaven.”
Keisha
climbed up onto Marsha’s desk and got a blue box file down from the bookshelf. She passed it to me. Inside, folded into hundreds of tiny parcels, were many, many – God knows how many – empty wrappers. She really did have a serious Creme Egg habit.
“Where do you get them all from?”
Marsha shrugged and took an egg from the drawer. “It’s not hard – drone delivery. The teachers never notice.”
“Oh.” Those small flying robots. Maybe that’s why Marsha was putting something in her pocket when we were in the quad.
“Have one if you like.”
I hadn’t eaten chocolate since I’d been brought back. I took one and peeled away the wrapper, drinking in the delicious scent. I bit the top off… Oh, that thick, soft crack. I let the gorgeousness melt in my mouth, coating my teeth, before chewing and swallowing and revelling in the glory of it. I tipped my head back against the wall.
“Heaven,” I said. “Absolute heaven.”
I stuck my tongue in the too-sweet centre and closed my eyes. Ravenous greed took over and I gobbled the whole thing down, licking the warm melted chocolate off my fingers. I slid sideways across the wall and lay on the floor, eyes closed. Eventually, Keisha shook me gently. I raised one of my sticky fingers to my lips and said, “Shh.”
Marsha said, “She’s chocolate drunk.”
After a moment, the sugar hit. Heat flushed through me. I snapped my eyes open. I had to cool down. I went to Marsha’s window and pushed it open, as wide as it would go, trying to lean out, letting the fresh sea air wash over me.
“How could I have forgotten my first love? Chocolate. How have I done without it for so long?”
Marsha said, “Watching you enjoy that was almost as good as eating it myself. Almost.”
She peeled her own egg and bit the top off.
I was fighting the urge to jump up and down. Seriously, what was going on with my limbs? I looked back out of the window – I wanted to run.
Beauty Sleep Page 16
